


Greatest Show on Earth

by Lexie



Category: Hellboy (movie-verse)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-23
Updated: 2008-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 05:38:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexie/pseuds/Lexie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liz Sherman is 17 years old, and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is pretty much the last place she wants to be. Yuletide 2008.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Greatest Show on Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VegaOfTheLyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VegaOfTheLyre/gifts).



**Newark, New Jersey - December 1991**

"I believe you'll find it quite comfortable, here at the Bureau."

Hellboy's head rose sharply at the muffled, familiar voice. He had approximately three seconds to shift himself and remove the evidence, after hearing it, but he still found time for a hissed, "_Crap!_" as he moved.

When the doors swung open, he was standing innocently in front of the desk (rather than sitting behind it with his boots up), cigar held behind his back.

He opened his mouth to greet the white-haired professor -- and then he saw her.

Walking beside the professor was a girl, dressed entirely in shapeless black layers and carrying a duffel bag over one skinny shoulder. She couldn't have been older than eighteen, a scrawny little thing with a sharp face and black bangs. Her eyes were dark and shrewd, flicking from object to object in the library.

When they landed on Hellboy, she stopped in her tracks.

Hellboy narrowed his eyes, tail thrashing, and opened his mouth to ask who the runt was -- and then he blinked. She had halted, but she wasn't staring at his horns or his tail.

She looked him right in the face from across the study, brown eyes on gold, and then she said, "So you're Hellboy, huh?"

He shot her an amused look and stepped down off the raised platform, closer to her. She didn't flinch. "Got it in one," he said. "Who're you?"

Bruttenholm stepped in. "This is Miss Sherman, to whom," and he was raising bushy eyebrows at the girl, "I did not mention your name. Miss Sherman, my son."

"Come on, Professor," said acid-tongued Miss Sherman, who didn't look much like a 'Miss Sherman.' She looked like she belonged in the crowd at a grunge band show, her hood up and her hands shoved into her pockets. "I'm a ward of the state, not an idiot."

Hellboy grinned a little bit, though he quashed it when his father glanced his way. "Hey," he said, and he took the last step in and discovered that he towered over her. He offered her his left hand. "Hellboy."

She glanced up, and she put her small white hand in his and firmly shook it. "Liz. Hey." She let her eyes flick away, with the ease of someone who spent her life avoiding eye contact, and she stepped past him, taking in the sights; the glass panels of Abe's tank, the statues, the desk, and -- most of all -- the shelves upon shelves of books.

Hellboy winced as the girl stepped past him; he shifted his weight. She had stopped several feet behind him, but his father was in front; his fingers twitched on the cigar still pressed against the small of his back, but he didn't (couldn't) turn.

"Wow," the girl said. She craned her neck, staring up at the tallest bookshelf. "That's a serious amount of books."

"Knowledge, Miss Sherman, is the best defense we _have_ against the dark," Professor Bruttenholm told her, stepping to the lectern set up in front of a water tank wall panel. He flipped the pages of the three books resting on it. "Son, have you seen Abe?"

"Not in a couple hours." Hellboy shrugged. "He's around." He made a vague gesture toward the gold doors with his stone hand.

The girl crossed behind Hellboy, combat boots scuffing. He took a surreptitious look down and to the side as she passed (and as his father was momentarily preoccupied with one of the books that Abe was reading). Her eyes moved in a telltale slide, from his lower back, up his side and shoulder, to his eyes.

Clearly, she'd spotted the cigar.

She looked, for a second, like she was thinking about smiling.

Hellboy grinned at her and tossed her a sneaky wink. Liz Sherman's mouth twitched; her gaze quickly lowered and she stepped past him.

Hellboy glanced across the study, at his father. "He might've gone down to medical," he offered.

The professor looked up, eyebrows furrowed. "Oh?" He straightened, with the help of the lectern. "I suppose I had better fetch him, then. I trust I can leave the two of you to become better acquainted."

The pair shared a glance. "Sure," said Hellboy.

"Whatever," muttered Liz Sherman, arms folded.

"I won't be long," the professor said, with a final glance between the two of them, and he limped out of the study, leaning heavily on his cane.

Hellboy peered after him, then pulled his hand out from behind his back and flexed his wrist. "Thanks for not tellin' him." He put the cigar back in his mouth. "He don't approve of smoking."

Liz Sherman rolled her eyes. "I'm not a tattletale." She watched him for a long moment. Then she said, "You got a light?"

* * *

  
"Do you have any nicknames?" asked Liz, lit cigarette pressed between her fingers. She sat with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, hood still covering her head against the biting winter wind. There wasn't a star in the sky, the taste of snow in the air.

"I mean, 'Hellboy,' " she continued. "It's a little Biblical."

Hellboy sat with his tail and lower legs dangling over the edge of the roof, cigar embers in counterpoint to the glow of the cigarette beside him. He shrugged. "Couple of the guys call me Big Red."

Liz's mouth curved up, as if against her will. "Wow. What a bunch of poets," she muttered, and he had to grin.

"Hey, you don't like it, you come up with a better one," he told her. "Next question's mine." He puffed on the cigar; exhaled a stream of smoke. "You stickin' around here?"

She glanced at him. "Officially or unofficially?"

Hellboy considered, then said, "Can't go wrong with both."

"Officially, I'm here til my eighteenth birthday next year." She flicked a piece of gravel over the edge of the roof; watched it til it was lost to the darkness. "Unofficially, if this sucks, I'm taking off."

"It ain't that bad," he told her. "You got missions, cable, six squares a day. And I'm _this_ close to gettin' a cat."

Liz stared at him. "You like cats?"

Hellboy pointed at her with a stone finger. "That counts as a question. Answer's yeah, I do." He grinned at her; she gave an irritated huff and looked away. "Mine now." He thought about it for a second, and then: "What're you doin' here? Pop doesn't bring a whole lot of strays home." He shrugged one shoulder. "Pretty much just you an' me."

Her mouth twisted and she pressed her chin to her leg. "I'm a freak," she said, quite clearly, into her knee.

Hellboy laughed. "_You're_ a freak?"

"Yeah," Liz retorted fiercely, raising her head and glaring at him. "I'm a freak, and apparently, somebody decided I'm _enough_ of one that I've got no shot at fitting in or _ever_ living a normal life, so I've gotta be locked up underground in some -- some creepy secret government facility!"

She didn't seem mad so much as trapped, defensive; that (and the desperate edge in her voice, the hunch to her shoulders) was what wound up dictating Hellboy's response.

"Whoa," he said, frowning and lifting a hand. "Easy. First off, it's not _creepy_. Second -- all I'm sayin' is me? Abe? We stand out in a crowd. You? Unless you're hidin' some floppy ears and a horn under that hood, nobody's gonna look at you twice."

She exhaled sharply and pushed her hood back, revealing a mop of short black hair, normal ears, and no horn. She rested her chin on her knees, shut her eyes, and said through her teeth, "When I get mad, I light on fire."

Hellboy took a second look at her, appraising. "--What, literally?"

Liz nodded, her face set in tight lines. She took a deep drag on her cigarette.

"Huh." He tapped his cigar over the edge of the roof, letting ash float away on the wind. "Never met anybody who could do that before."

"Like I said." Her boots shifted, just enough to crunch in the gravel spread across the B.P.R.D.'s roof. "I'm a freak."

He snorted softly. "Join the crowd, kid," he said, and Liz's eyes darted to him. Slowly, one side of her mouth lifted.

Hellboy thought she was kind of pretty when she smiled.


End file.
